From Robert Whitcomb’s “Digital Diary,’’ in GoLocal24.com

Will this happen in some of Providence’s new residential towers? Joe Walsh of The Boston Guardian (where I serve as unpaid president) reports that “downtown neighborhoods only added about 1,100 owner-occupied condos in the last 15 years, even as the total number of condos grew by nearly 6,000.’’ Much of this strange change can be explained by foreign buyers seeking a safe place to own real estate, as investments and/or as places to move to. Prosperous American cities such as Boston, San Francisco and New York are particularly attractive to rich people from nations that lack a rigorous rule of law that protects property rights. Consider Russia and China.

Owning a fancy condo in a rich U.S. city looks like a safe way to store wealth.

Consider that in at least one new Boston luxury building, Millennium Tower, three out of four units have owners who don’t claim owner-occupancy tax exemptions! That suggests why some of these buildings look remarkably dark at night. Some nearby store and restaurant owners complain that the near-empty buildings mean far fewer customers than you’d expect from proximity to such huge buildings.

You could see something like this happening in parts of downtown Providence and the East Side, particularly with rich parents of students at Brown seeking pied-a-terres. Jason Fane’s proposed 46-story Hope Point Tower, if the next recession doesn’t kill it, might lure a lot of these people.